Blizzard bans a gold rush

Seeking to maintain game balance in World of WarCraft, more than a thousand …

Close on the heels of the Burning Legion, John Maynard Keynes has descended upon the world of Azeroth. If you don't know about World of Warcraft, it's likely you do know about consumerism, even if you live in North Korea or Berkeley, California. Within what is quickly becoming the most popular time wasting diversion Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) ever, fantasy game characters have adventures and kill things for gold. Those characters then use that gold to buy better weapons and armor to kill more things and have more adventures. Unfortunately, there is a glitch, but it's not in the game. The problem is that those too busy on Earth for adventure in Azeroth are seeking, or being sought by, individuals who engage in "gold farming." It works like this:

A gold farmer collects gold by adventuring and killing things in the game world.

The "gold" is then sold to other players for actual money in the real world.

PROFIT!

As surreal as it may sound, real money is at play in MMORPGs through such activity. Consider Julian Dibbel, an Ultima Online player and virtual entrepreneur, who is also writing a book about his experience. In less than a year he amassed $11,000 in real money, $3900 in his last month, reselling items acquired in the game world. While such behavior may improve a bank account balance, it upsets game balance, and in the case of World of WarCraft (WoW) is strictly prohibited by the Terms of Use.

You may not exploit World of Warcraft for any commercial purpose, including, but not limited to, performing "power leveling" services to other users of World of Warcraft for "real" money.

Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported "sale" in the "real world" of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for "real" money or trade items for things of value outside of World of Warcraft.

It is unsurprising then that Blizzard brought down the +10 Hammer of Eternal Banishment on over a thousand WoW user accounts this weekend.

Over the recent weeks we have been investigating the activities of certain individuals who have been farming gold in order to sell it in exchange for real world currency. After researching the situation, we have issued permanent suspensions to over one thousand accounts that have been engaging in this practice. We do not condone such actions and will take decisive action as they are against our policy and damage the game economy as a whole. We will continue researching this matter.

Setting aside the debate over recent problems with the servers and whether Blizzard might better spend time and effort solving that issue for good, is anyone else surprised by the "game economy" phrase? In the past Blizzard has not hesitated to act in order to maintain the gaming experience in its other titles, but the scope and severity of the penalty is interesting in this case. One could argue that the "gods" of Azeroth are seeking to protect their world from the potential ravages of inflation created by economic activity in our world. Is there more at stake here than the play experience? Probably not, but the process of building self-sustaining virtual worlds with their own ecologies of economy and social order won't remain the fodder of movies forever.